The Shadow of the European Council. Understanding Legislation on Economic Governance

Abstract

This article analyses the role of the European Council in two key legislative packages on economic and budgetary coordination, the SixPack and the Two-Pack, which were negotiated under the ordinary legislative procedure. It assesses how and to what extent the key actor in the literature on the new intergovernmentalism -the European Council -2 is able to curb the powers of the supranational institutions -the Commission and the European Parliament -in a policy area where the community method has been applied since the Treaty of Lisbon. It tracks the development of the legislative negotiations -from the stages preceding the Commission's proposal to their conclusions, relying on official documents, press reports and 30 original interviews with key decision-makers. The strong role of the European Council both as an agenda-setter and in the legislative negotiations stands out, and suggests that the implications of new intergovernmentalism may well extend beyond intergovernmental decision-making processes.

The European Parliament and economic governance: explaining a case of limited influence

“…Even advocates of the 'new intergovernmentalism' recognise that the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack are an exception to their story (Fabbrini, 2013). On the other hand, other scholars noted that the EP was not very successful in pushing its preferences through, particularly on economic issues (Bressanelli and Chelotti, 2016;O'Keeffe, Salines and Wieczorek, 2016).This article presents an in-depth study of the influence of the EP in the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack.It has both descriptive and explanatory purposes. Descriptively, it aims to provide a systematic map of the negotiations focusing on the key controversies -i.e.…”

“…Even advocates of the 'new intergovernmentalism' recognise that the Six-Pack and the Two-Pack are an exception to their story (Fabbrini, 2013). On the other hand, other scholars noted that the EP was not very successful in pushing its preferences through, particularly on economic issues (Bressanelli and Chelotti, 2016;O'Keeffe, Salines and Wieczorek, 2016).…”

“…O'Keeffe, Salines and Wieczorek (2016) demonstrate that the EP chose to downplay socio-economic issues where it was internally divided to focus on institutional issues. Bressanelli and Chelotti (2016) show that the European Council's active involvement in the reform of the EMU curtailed the power of the EP. More broadly, Dawson argues that in the EU 'post-crisis' economic governance the EP 'rather than act as a co-legislature … is seen as an institution to advise and be "consulted" ' (2015, p. 988-9).…”

Taming the European Parliament: How Member States Reformed Economic Governance in the EU

“…With the outbreak of the Eurocrisis in 2009, the EU's economic governance has been profoundly changed in different aspectsfrom the reform of the SGP to the legislation on the Banking Union (BU). Relying on more than thirty original interview data 1 and a wealth of primary sources, and bringing together empirical evidence across different contributions on specific aspects of the EMU (e.g., Bressanelli and Chelotti 2016;2018;S. Fabbrini 2015;Héritier and Schoeller 2015;Howarth and Quaglia 2016;Rittberger 2014), we aim to provide a first comprehensivealbeit preliminaryassessment of the role of the EP in the (post-2009) reform of the EU's economic governance.…”

The Six-Pack as a Test for the New Intergovernmentalism and Supranationalism Theories

“…While Ioannou et al (2015) cover different theoretical approaches to the crisis, the new intergovernmentalism approaches can be found in Fabbrini (2016), Puetter (2016), and Thaler (2016), whereas the new supranationalism can be found in Bauer and Becker (2014) and Dehousse (2016). Finally, an empirical case on the SixPack has been analysed by Bressanelli and Chelotti (2016). Although having some similarities with the latter, the novelty of this paper lies in the fact that the Six-Pack empirical analysis tests not only the supranational-intergovernmental dichotomy in terms of the two decision-making processes, but also the arguments advanced by the new intergovernmentalism and supranationalism approaches.…”